Buffalo Nickels (1913–1938)

Fraser, MacVeagh, and the Commission

Theodore Roosevelt's conviction that American coins were artistically unworthy of the republic had set off a transformation that began with his private correspondence with sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens in 1905 and produced Saint-Gaudens's eagle and double eagle in 1907, Bela Lyon Pratt's Indian Head quarter eagle and half eagle in 1908, and the Lincoln cent in 1909. By 1911 that momentum had reached the nickel. Charles Barber's Liberty Head nickel, in use since 1883, had already passed the 25-year statutory minimum and could be replaced without an act of Congress, and Treasury Secretary Franklin MacVeagh had no interest in leaving it in place simply because no one had acted to change it. MacVeagh bypassed Barber entirely and commissioned sculptor James Earle Fraser.

Fraser was a student of Saint-Gaudens and had grown up near the Western frontier. He was already known for his bronze sculpture The End of the Trail, depicting an exhausted warrior slumped on a weary horse, and he brought to the nickel commission a sensibility about the American West and its peoples that no Mint engraver of the era possessed. He proposed a Native American portrait on the obverse and an American bison on the reverse. MacVeagh was impressed. The design was approved in December 1912, and Fraser received $2,500 for his work plus additional compensation for revisions through early 1913. Production began in February 1913, and the coin was officially released into circulation on March 4, 1913.¹

The Models: Iron Tail, Two Moons, and a Third Who Remains Unconfirmed

Fraser was consistent over the decades in saying that the obverse portrait was not a likeness of any single individual but a composite intended to represent Native American people as a type. He identified Iron Tail, a Lakota Sioux chief known for his participation in Buffalo Bill's Wild West show, as the strongest influence, writing in 1931 that he was "the best Indian head I can remember." He consistently named Two Moons, a Cheyenne chief, as a second model. The third has never been definitively established. Fraser gave different names at different points, including Big Tree, a Kiowa, and in his own words could not recall with certainty who the third individual was. Multiple individuals came forward over the years claiming the distinction; Fraser's own correspondence suggests he received characteristics from several people and never considered the portrait a portrait in the strict sense.²

The bison on the reverse is traditionally identified as Black Diamond, a bull bison at the Central Park Menagerie in New York City, though the identification has never been settled. Fraser later named Black Diamond himself, but he placed the animal in the Bronx Zoo, where Black Diamond never lived. Black Diamond's subsequent history was undignified: no bids were received when he was put up for auction on June 28, 1915; he was then purchased privately for $300 by A. Silz, Inc., a game and poultry dealer, slaughtered on November 17, and his meat sold at $2 a pound. A taxidermist mounted his head and fashioned his hide into a thirteen-foot automobile robe.³

The Hobbs Problem and the Release

The Buffalo nickel's path to circulation was slowed by the Hobbs Manufacturing Company of Worcester, Massachusetts, which produced coin-detection mechanisms for vending machines and maintained that Fraser's design would defeat its devices. Months of correspondence followed from July 1912 onward, with Hobbs demanding modifications that Fraser considered destructive to the design's artistic integrity. MacVeagh resolved the dispute after a meeting on February 14, 1913, which he conducted much like a legal hearing, deciding to release the coins over Hobbs's objections and noting that no other firm had complained and that only the most serious business considerations should stand in the way of an improvement to the coinage.⁴

Two Types: The Mound and the Plain

The first Buffalo nickels of 1913 showed the bison standing on a raised ground mound. The denomination FIVE CENTS sat at the high point of this mound and wore away rapidly in circulation. Within months the Mint recognized that the design was functionally impractical: coins came back from commerce with the denomination illegible while otherwise still usable. Barber prepared a modified reverse that recessed the ground to a thinner, flat line, dropping the denomination inscription into a lower position protected by the surrounding field. This revision was introduced mid-year in 1913, producing the two distinct types that every Buffalo nickel collector must account for: Type 1 (Mound) from early 1913 and Type 2 (Plain) from mid-1913 through 1938. Both types were produced at all three mints in 1913.⁵

The Persistent Problem of the Date

Recessing the denomination protected FIVE CENTS on the reverse but did nothing for the date on the obverse. The date on the Buffalo nickel sat at one of the highest points of the obverse relief, positioned at the base of the Indian's neck where it was fully exposed to the friction of commerce. It wore away faster than virtually any other numeral on any American coin of the era. Well-circulated examples with completely legible four-digit dates are genuinely more desirable than those without, and a significant portion of Buffalo nickels found in old jars and accumulations are entirely dateless, legal tender worth five cents but of minimal numismatic interest. The Mint made several attempts to address the problem through design modification, none of which fully solved it.

Strike Weakness Defines Every Purchasing Decision in This Series

Strike weakness is the dominant technical challenge for Buffalo nickel collectors. The series as a whole struck poorly compared to the Jefferson nickel that followed it, and many Denver and San Francisco dates of the late 1910s and 1920s are effectively unavailable with fully struck central details. The high points most prone to weakness are the Indian's cheekbone, the hair above the ear, and the bison's horn, hip, and tail fringe. Many full-luster uncirculated examples show soft detail at these locations that is an artifact of the original strike rather than subsequent handling. Grading a Buffalo nickel therefore means assessing the surfaces and the strike separately.⁶

Matte Proofs were struck from 1913 through 1916: 1,520 of the 1913 Type 1, 1,514 of the 1913 Type 2, 1,275 in 1914, 1,050 in 1915 and 600 in 1916. Proofs returned in 1936, when 4,420 were struck in satin and brilliant finishes, and 5,769 brilliant Proofs followed in 1937. The matte Proofs are distinguished by their grainy, satin-like surfaces rather than the mirrored fields of traditional Proofs, and deceptively well-struck business strikes have sometimes been misidentified as matte Proofs by casual observers. All genuine matte Proofs carry a premium and require careful authentication; certified PR63 to PR65 examples generally trade in the low four figures, and only the finest pieces reach five figures.

Key Dates and the Scarcity Landscape

No Buffalo nickels were struck in 1922, 1932, or 1933, creating three gap years in an otherwise continuous series. The 1931-S has an unusual history: only 194,000 pieces had been struck when acting Mint Director Mary O'Reilly became alarmed by the low mintage figure and ordered additional production to suppress speculation. The San Francisco Mint struck approximately 1,006,000 more nickels through the balance of the year, bringing the total to 1,200,000. The result is a coin that is genuinely scarce in circulated grades but relatively available in Mint State, because collectors and dealers were already saving roll quantities of low-mintage issues by 1931.

The 1926-S, with 970,000 pieces struck, is the only date-mint combination in the series with a mintage below one million and is the primary low-mintage key in business strikes. San Francisco issues of the late 1910s and 1920s present what specialists call conditional rarities, dates with large enough original mintages that circulated examples are findable, but so heavily worn in the typical surviving example that well-struck Gem (Mint State 65 or finer) specimens are genuinely elusive or effectively unknown. The 1918, 1920, 1924, and 1926 San Francisco issues fall into this category. Denver coins from the same years present the additional obstacle of characteristically weak strikes even before considering circulation wear.⁷

The 1918/7-D Overdate

The 1918/7-D overdate, in which a working die received an initial impression from a 1917 hub and was then given a second impression from a 1918 hub, leaving the underlying 7 visible beneath the 8, is one of the most valuable regular-strike varieties in the series, though the 1916 doubled-die obverse brings more in every grade. Collectors noticed the anomaly in circulating coins and identified the variety in the early 1930s. The die was hubbed at the Philadelphia Mint, which prepared working dies for all three mints, and shipped to Denver; a similar overlap of dated hubs had already produced a 1914/(3) overdate (a Philadelphia Mint coin, bearing no mintmark). Only a few thousand examples of the 1918/7-D are estimated to survive in all grades, the great majority circulated. The variety brings about $1,000 in Good and reaches five figures from Extremely Fine upward in USA CoinBook's 2026 estimates, and authentication is essential as altered examples are documented.⁸

The 1937-D Three-Legged Buffalo

The most famous error coin in the series, and one of the most recognizable production mistakes in all of American coinage, was created at the Denver Mint in 1937 when a reverse die damaged by clashing was aggressively polished rather than replaced. The polishing removed the bison's right front foreleg entirely, leaving only the hoof where it meets the ground line, and the bison's rear leg on these coins often looks rough and pockmarked. The numismatic historian Walter Breen attributed the damage to a Denver press operator named Young, who polished away the clash marks instead of replacing the die; other specialists think the Mint was simply stretching the life of a worn, rusted die pair. The error was not caught until coins had already reached circulation, by which point an estimated 20,000 pieces, and possibly more, had been struck.

Montana dealer C.L. "Cowboy" Franzen found examples in late 1937, and the variety became famous almost at once. Well-struck Gem examples are rare; the majority of certified specimens are in lower circulated grades where the missing leg is clearly visible but surfaces show significant wear. Genuine examples display specific markers: complete absence of the right front leg with the hoof remaining on the ground line, a rough, pockmarked rear leg, and on many coins a raised die-rust line running beneath the bison's belly. The variety is widely counterfeited by filing the leg from genuine four-legged coins; authentication by PCGS or NGC is essential for any purchase. A related but less dramatic 1936-D variety, produced by the same over-polishing process, is sometimes called the 3½-Legs Buffalo: the front leg is partially rather than fully removed, producing an intermediate effect that is genuine but commands lower premiums than the fully legless 1937-D.⁹

The End of the Series and What Replaced It

The Buffalo design reached the 25-year statutory minimum in 1938 and could be replaced without an act of Congress, and Mint officials who had never fully resolved the striking and wear problems of the Buffalo nickel were ready to move on. In January 1938 the Mint announced an open competition for a new five-cent design, specifying that it show President Thomas Jefferson on the obverse and Jefferson's home Monticello on the reverse. Felix Schlag, a German-immigrant sculptor, won the competition and received $1,000. The last Buffalo nickels were struck in April 1938 at Denver, the only mint to strike the Buffalo design that final year. The Jefferson nickel entered production on October 3, 1938 and reached circulation on November 15.¹⁰

More than 1.2 billion Buffalo nickels were struck across the 26-year run, spread over 64 date-mint combinations.

Building the Set

For the type collector, two coins complete the Buffalo nickel entry: one Type 1 and one Type 2. Type 2 examples of common dates are available at modest prices in all grades through Gem. Type 1 coins were struck only in the first months of 1913, about 38.4 million at the three mints, so they are scarcer as a type than Type 2. A date set of all 64 struck date-mint combinations is a realistic collecting goal with the right budget; in circulated grades the 1913-S Type 2 costs more than the lower-mintage 1926-S, and the S-mint conditional rarities of the late 1910s and 1920s demand a premium in Gem. The matte Proofs of 1913 through 1916 are expensive standalone acquisitions but not part of the standard date set. David W. Lange's The Complete Guide to Buffalo Nickels is the standard specialist reference for the series, and Bowers's A Guide Book of Buffalo and Jefferson Nickels adds die-variety listings and market commentary.